


All Along the Wall

by Good_Evening



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst, Bottom Castiel, Denial of Feelings, Drama, Drug Abuse, Dubious Consent, Episode: s05e04 The End, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loss of Grace, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sexual Frustration, Smut, Top Dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 05:22:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Evening/pseuds/Good_Evening
Summary: When Dean seems to abandon him after a broken foot lays him up, Cas' habits kick into high gear. The collapse of their relationship is as grueling as its kindling, but the spectacle of their bitterness unveils the depth of their commitment.With nothing ahead of Dean and Castiel, they can't help but reflect on their past together to escape their present.





	All Along the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> This is an exploration of the development and decay of Castiel and Dean's relationship leading up to The End, particularly Cas' injury and induction into humanity. I wanted to pull the focus from "how to fix it" and Past!Dean to "how did it break," and "how do you live with it." There is particular attention to Cas' model for humanity being the Righteous Man, and the potentiality of that term losing any solid meaning.
> 
> It's almost whump, so close.

Let them have a clean finish, no remains left to ruin: a simple salt and burn. Cas considers his cabin as he chews through a stem of lavender, clicking the green ridges flat between his teeth, taut, the sprig caught under his tongue. His lot is just outside the garden, the edge of the camp by the wood, closest to the fence with its grisly, makeshift pikes, chain links, and scrap reinforcement. Embracing the side of his house is an unruly hawthorn, the source of many of his “hippy-dippy” wreaths, corsages, and sweet-smelling bouquets. Dean calls them a waste as if Cas had anything better to do. As if he had anything better for him to do but give his life when asked. He pauses.

Out across the plot, beyond the little twine fence, a door creaks open and slams shut like a gunshot but Cas is well-used to the sound. Most of the doors are reinforced or booby-trapped by some means. True to his father, Dean has a shotgun rigged up facing his own porch, and a tripwire he can set if he ever actually sleeps when locked in his own cabin. And where did he hide the gun but in that pitiful wreath, made so many years ago, one of Cas’ clumsiest works?

He’d been laid up for months, popping pain pills as Dean seemingly spent as much time as possible in danger: supply runs, recon, and multi-day missions.

As if a cat suddenly taking to the woods, he preferred that Cas would not be there for It.

The bed bound invalid took to plucking loose threads from his pillow. When Dean finally graced his door, several weeks after the injury, he was shocked to find Cas had had it replaced with beads. Well-wishers, teammates, and Chuck had filtered in and out around his moods. Beyond the inevitable chewing out, (Cas had a knack for poor decisions and grandiose statements, like someone else) the hunter solemnly tolerated the irrationality of the need to look outside, to see the flowers and the arriving bands of survivors. To not feel bound to such impossibly smaller states.

Hawthorn, cedar, and honeysuckle. He’d woven the boughs together and nearly explained the meaning to Dean (as a language of Earth, Cas felt compelled to learn the language of flowers) but the silence following their typical arguments was the most soothing part of any meeting. As soon as they agreed to disagree, Dean finally began stripping off his weapons, never minding the open entry as his shirt fell and he descended over Cas, the bitter patient, so careful of the cast on his foot that he hardly touched him. They kissed until his jaws ached but Dean never moved him, never made to strip him. His gentleness was so false, apologetic; the need to make up for his absence so real Cas couldn’t ignore it, pretend everything was as it should be. It drove the fallen angel insane.

* * *

Cas toes the dirt beside a potato plant, enjoying the sink of his feet into the dark topsoil. Up in their city on a hill, (he smiles) the clay-thick earth prefers shallow roots, but in Cas’ little garden, anything can grow. His plot gets the most sun before the day shifts behind the trees and their half of the valley is thrust into shade. Tomatoes, bell peppers, goliath potatoes; while everyone else is choking down cabbage, beans, and chard, Cas’ little runoff at the bottom of camp had long since gathered that mineral-rich earth, the fallen trees and leaves that died before the End. His vanity here is misplaced. Everything they produce is returned to the collective. Everything he reaps is surrendered to Dean.

Dean had once called him out on it--the edenlike fill of the rows--shoved him up against the side of his cabin just as he put down his watering can (and how funny is that? Dean’s passion made patient by something mundane as _water scarcity?_ )

_Are you using your Grace?_

His eyes smouldered, releasing waves of frustrated hope that his captive drank in, but Dean said nothing. They hardly spoke. And yet Cas always _heard_ him.

Cas sidesteps a leaning stalk and ushers a few wasps away. The lazy swoops of his hand curl like tails of opium smoke (now there’s something sticky-sweet) as he chases their angry asses away from his garden. Like croats, there must be a hive. Shit.

“Are you really going to ask me again?” he spat, shimmying in Dean’s cage grip, “You think I’ve held anything back from you, in _this_ of all possible outcomes?” Tremble at the middle. Shuddering exhalations that betrayed his elation at Dean surrounding him. Breathing him in. Devouring his lies. This time the words hung between them and Cas meets his lips, gaze lowered to miss the pain, the closing in, Dean pushing him away while tightening his hold. Wasn’t that their dynamic? He couldn’t even twist away, not for the drama, not for his life, not if Dean, himself asked him to.

Cas rears his head back so his neck pops and he laughs alone in his garden, envisions the hope in Dean’s eyes,

 _I don’t know what you have left, but…_ he faltered, hand relaxing. At the time, it was nearly the harvest. Squash, fat and yellow, lined the paths.

 _I don’t deserve it..._ or had he left it unsaid?

LIKE SO MUCH ELSE.

Dean could never appreciate himself, and so by extension, anyone who still managed to like him beyond his capacity as a leader. That un-numbed part rages, that righteous slice of Cas still pinioned to the shreds of his angelic pride, of _you-can’t-even-convince-him-of-this_ , of _what-can-love-do-if-it-can’t-do-this,_ but this version has screamed itself hoarse, so that he can no longer make out his own voice on the matter. Could never convince Dean of his worthiness, or admit what’s between them apart from what it’s become. Dean believes in nothing but vengeance because Cas failed his belief in him so utterly--somewhere between the weed and the Xanax. Somewhere after Sam.

Now, his opinions matter so little, he’s wondered if something had been stripped from him with his Grace, some soul-centered talent Dean and everyone else possesses, the power to persuade and be heard. When he speaks, he hears a dull buzzing, a cheap imitation of his true voice. Cas would give anything for humanity, and now he has it.

What a trade.

The beads are a newer installation. They click against the doorway as a guest searches for him, someone who can’t be Dean because the whole of his weight isn’t stabbing into the floorboards, causing the cabin to creak in whispers of anticipation. The music of prayer doesn’t follow him. This one, too, has no faith in God or His angels (present company excluded). Cas snorts. He hops up onto his deck, ignoring the cramp in his foot at the angle, and sidles into the frontroom to find Chuck.

“H… hi, uh,”

Cas breezes past and lifts the corner of his mattress, producing a couple of pre-rolled joints. He offers one to his guest,

“Um, no, thank you, though. I just wanted to go over--”

“You’ll want to talk to Dean.” Cas’ interruption coincides with the strike of a match. His voice is almost lost in the hiss of sulfur.

“He’s actually, uh. Out. But he left this for you,” Chuck fumbles with a clipboard and tugs an envelope from the water-rumpled mass. It rained this morning and the whole camp had to move stock under cover. Chuck must have left the master list, the _written word_ of their life here, out to mold. Useless prophet. Cas’ shoulders shake with a giggle as he accepts the envelope. Their hands brush, Cas lingers too long and the man steps back. They’ve never been intimate and he’s sure it’s because the little man feels worse about his current state than anyone but Dean. Somehow.

Chuck shuffles. Cas’ gaze multiplies his anxieties. For a while, he maintained contact with the angels, but once the air went dead he always slunk around Cas, shoulders low; almost like he could hear those loud, angry thoughts the fallen one still launched into oblivion. A telepathic connection with a camp manager. Chuck couldn’t even fight in the field, where his talent might be useful. Cas looks pointedly at the doorway and Chuck excuses himself.

The paper is damp and the blue ink of his name has blotted at the edges like mold spores. Like sparse feathers spread.

* * *

Dean’s gravity is such that Castiel’s fall to Earth spun on even as the ground crushed him, Grace shredded while his siblings condemned him to his choices. Dean’s orbit is endless. Cas is still falling through a loud nothingness, ears ringing with desire and fear: one long celestial tailspin, still pulled ineffably toward the Righteous Man. Grace leaves him in little slips, like raking his fingers through wet sand, letting them rest too long in Dean’s care and watching more fall away. His faith is non-Newtonian. Only that kind of spiritual violence Dean is so adept at seems to awaken it; he still leads him on through the dark of uncertainty. Dean, his raison d’être, is a kind of repellent to everything the seraph once stood for (in all his Chrysler-sized glory) so that the only thing that hasn’t burnt away in orbit is this paltry body, and Cas’ own captive consciousness screaming from inside of it. It used to be all he needed, this man’s word. It still is, in too many ways.

Dean gives him purpose but made him useless.

“That’s the thing,” Cas quips, slim wrist shockingly steady as his knees sway, “you think, once you start falling, how could you possibly brace yourself? You can only await impact,” the glug of the bottle whispers between cups. Dean grimaces at the wasted droplets, turning to leave, “But you just keep falling.”

It’s dark out and the day had been quiet. Held in the air, the collected sighs of the camp betray bottled anxiety. Nights are prime for attack and the sentries are on short shifts to prevent fatigue. Even Chuck is pulling his weight in a tower not far from the garden.

The bottle lolls as Cas haphazardly plunks it on the table, toasting Dean’s retreating back with a broken smile, “Bottom’s up.” He stops at the door but knows if he opens his mouth, he’ll just lay into him. They don’t need another drunken fight, like one more notch in Castiel’s hacked-to-shit bedpost. Point of fact, alcohol has rarely eased the tension in their relationship. It used to lubricate a moment, but extracting the truth from a Winchester is a little less painful than cauterizing a wound, and Castiel learned his tricks from Dean.

Dean thunders through camp with a murderous expression, his own kind of Horseman. Chuck and a few sparrows scurry away from him somewhere near the garden.

He can nearly taste the yearlong argument over Cas’ weight, the comparative frailty of his limbs. Only Dean can beat him, arm wrestling, and he wonders the cause, (hand holding, a prize before defeat) but still. A seraph.

Since his injury, Cas’ self-imposed confinement washed the color from his skin and stripped the tone from his muscles. Even Jimmy Novak had had more of a presence than Cas the false guru, Cas the junkie; Cas, the brokenhearted, so desperately in love with the Righteous Man that only their third time (alone) together, Dean had to restrain him from clawing permanent scars. The conflicting distance he’d tried to hold him at as the despondent angel sank down in his lap had left Cas purely vulnerable, opened. He numbly recalls the misplaced hope of that moment. The hard-eyed betrayal that followed. Dean looked anywhere, to his cock, his chest, his lips: refused him at their most intimate.

Grease sizzling on coals, the subdued laughter of the off-duty in the mess hall and he is struck (as sometimes happens) by the epiphany of being alive, waiting outside the doors to Valhalla, although he knows he’s not taking Cas anywhere good. He can’t shake the memory of that night.

So maybe eye contact is more painful than getting filleted by an emotional junkie. That was a couple of months after the incident. The man had barely been able to walk before stumbling in front of Dean and urging him not to leave, a newly-cleaned bandage tied on his stiff foot. Dean had just finished wrapping it for him before their conversation spiraled.

They’d been fighting. Of course they’d been fighting. It was the first time they’d spoken more than a few words since the incident.

“Don’t you walk out on me. You’ve done few truly selfish things in your life, Dean, but don’t use me as an excuse.”

Cas had wanted closure. An answer.

“I _needed_ you,” he’d whispered, eyes cloudy with painkillers and tears, “and you treated me like an _infected_. After all--”

“I had a camp to run without my main support,” as if they were married, Cas thought with pain so great, his fingers shook. “I had enough to do without watching you get high and screw _my people_ every day instead of bothering to speak to me.” Dean spat venom, rearing up to full height instead of his usual tense stance, chin jutting out like a Deco sculpture. Cas limped. He was shorter, now, only just enough that Dean would be reminded of the reason for the sensual sway to his hips, the natural allure of the vulnerable that occasionally riled the camp. Bitch had fucked half of them at once, soon as he could “walk.”

Cas bristled like he could hear that awful monologue in Dean’s head, fit to strike him, “Don’t design to hurt me, Dean, I can hurt you, too. I will not let you walk on me.” _I’ve kicked your ass to kingdom come and Round Two is still in me_.

Dean pushed him. Literally and figuratively.

Cas stumbled back against his bed on half a curse, ankle failing him. Pressure dipped him lower on the mattress, face to face with an ominously composed Dean Winchester. Cold lips drew close to his ear and Cas welcomed the rolling shudder, desperate for human contact ( _I love_ **_you_** _. I love all of_ **_you_** , hadn’t he said?) Dean’s eyes rarely softened as they once had.

“You got nothing I haven’t taken.”

A twist, Dean’s shout as he landed on his back on the bed. Cas quickly covered him, shoving at their belts, yanking dust-encrusted jeans down over the thigh holster. Dean floundered, nostrils flared, hands clutching Cas’ hips so sharp he could feel his tendons sliding.

“I had been preparing for another _group meeting_ ,” Dean flinched, “but they’ll never enter if we’re here.” Exclusivity. They were still the “parents” of this outfit. A marriage of appearances, then. He reached behind himself and moaned, fingers edging down to coerce Dean’s growing erection between his cheeks. A controlled sigh filled the space between them. The brush of their foreheads as Dean leaned in close set his cheeks aflame. Damn it, he was still so _angry_ , so ready to solve this tension once for all, ready to violate something he knew Dean would never admit. The words (imitations? excuses?) ghosted across his skin, heavy as grief,

“I need you, Cas,” he breathed lowly and tensed with the old weight of the words. Cas sucked in a breath and faltered. “I need you to need you, too. I can’t watch you disappear every day. It kills me to think what you got up to while you were down,”

Cas hummed, “As you said; nothing you haven’t already taken. _”_ Nails dug into his back, Dean feeling him up like he was about to jump off a bridge, “I will never leave you, Dean don’t _ignore_ me,” he sighed, emphasis intended only slightly to hurt, to share this caged feeling. His thighs flexed as he hovered against the hunter’s stiff cock. Their eyes met, Dean’s wide with shock and Cas moaned, eyes drooping to his lips,

“Dean, I _nnh-_ know this is different. I need more from you. Please,” he goaded, leaning away to display himself, “do you want me?”

Dean growled, “I want you,”

“ **Why** do you want me, Dean?” he ground out, teeth clenched. Cas stared straight ahead but Dean’s gaze fell to his half-hard cock, dizzy with painkillers,

“Because the feel of you on my dick, Christ, Cas I need you, I’ve wanted this,” he caressed the scars where wings should have been, eliciting a long shudder as Cas gathered himself, steeling against blissful little thrusts and _oh Christ, that Dean wanted him--_

“That’s not... what I _a_ -asked.”

Their gazes leveled. Cas sighed long at the intensity of lust flaring in Dean’s eyes. Dean increasingly shoved at him, a pale, placating hand barely holding down that barrel chest as it rose toward him, encompassing him like the wall that kept their home safe. Willpower began to leach out of him in dregs, just like his Grace. Dean tended to do that to him.

“Say it,” he pleaded, “just say it, Dean, and I’ll do anything for you.” Dean inhaled at his neck and Cas shivered but maintained, pressing harder, “I need to know what this is, please. I don’t- _nnh_ -know, anymore, Dean. I can’t, _oh_ \--” he moaned softly, melancholic, “I can’t _see_ you,” the precise shape of his soul, the fearful depths of its longing. He was so sure of where they’d stood, before. Cas was quietly building that inner abuse, fighting himself for being so open yet resorting to manipulation to get what he wanted.

Is this not the most selfish request of his life? Leveraging his own limitless love of the Righteous Man for requisite affection, as if his ongoing martyrdom were a bargaining chip for Dean’s attentions? Castiel the angel never would have considered it, but Cas-the-burn-out at least knew to try. _We humans lie, Cas_. _Because that’s how you become--_

“Castiel,” the hunter’s breath shuddered out. Cas melted. He was flipped onto his back in a moment of weakness--he’d lost his edge. _Love is a Battlefield_ , that’s a song, right? His legs tightened around the hips pressing into him, warding off his attacker’s brief thrusts for the moment, collecting his shattered resolve even as Dean’s fingers sank into him and he whined like a bitch in heat, like a man in love. His wrists were gathered to be pinned above his dark curls and Cas flushed, voice wrecked,

“Don’t just take this from me, Dean, _please_.”

 _Haven’t I given enough?_ he thought warily, but Dean kissed him, all cords of strained muscle caging him in and rough drags of his lips over Cas’ opening mouth. Cas, poor, sweet, pure Cas, of course, _of course_ , collapsed into the feeling, of Dean wanting him, claiming him, pleasuring him.

_I need you, mine, Cas, my Castiel,_

The seraph moaned, surrendered into Dean’s arms and gave shaky thrusts into a tempting fist, earning a growl that rolled down to his core. Hot and slick, the head of Dean’s cock penetrated him in one thrust. He squealed, body strung like a bow, Dean Winchester literally tearing him apart rather than speaking his mind. The hunter gave two quick thrusts up and held, two punctuating moans jerked out of Cas like he’d been shoved to a wall,

“Not th--aah, Dean,” he gasped, canting his hips down and back in practiced rolls. “Y-you don’t ruh-remember, but, _ooh_ ,” he melted back, gripped the headboard and arched, searching, it was almost, not, it was, _it was_ , “Fuck, Dean,” he whined, and the hunter shuddered,

“You’re gonna come without me touching you, but only when I say,”

Christ, that was just the kind of leaderly bullshit he always ordered, but it was _just_ Cas and them alone, it was a compressed world, reduced to the fog of candlelight and incense, small and entire but irradiating. Pleasure burnt through him in dull currents and loud pangs; Dean changed his angle and Cas yelped, scalp on fire as Dean tugged his hair back and whispered to him,

“I remember what you said, I know, Cas,”

“Only- _oh_ , Dean, I lo, _y--_ ” Cas wriggled as Dean shoved him down, humping in circles, long, grinding thrusts that rediscovered that secret part of him. He clutched the back of Dean’s neck and pulled him into a kiss, legs wound, pulsing behind his hips. He breathed onto his lips,“Dean, please, I need,”and Dean silenced him with another kiss. Cas’ legs failed so Dean lifted one up and somebody screamed.

“Tell me! Dean- _nnh_ , tell me, please,”

“Castiel,” and at the sound of his name on the hunter’s lips, he came, shivering through it as a growl rolled over him and Dean began pounding him, pressing his leg back against his shoulder as he writhed and blinked,

“I never told you to do that,” he grunted at Cas, who had collapsed beneath him and clutched the sheets, mouth opening around soft moans. His eyes were red-rimmed and half-lidded as he gazed up, infatuated, adoring, enchanted by the sight of Dean, only him, _only them_ , irises glowing a clear blue. Dean’s mood softened involuntarily. Cas practically dissolved under the gentle scrutiny, the way Dean saw into him and his prayers filtered out unhindered, chaotic but _warm_. The words left him as if compelled,

“I love you, Dean Winchester.”

Cas lamented as the shell went back up but delighted in its faltering, saw hints of flushed embarrassment and cautious pleasure.

He would cling to the ecstatic betrayal of that moment like chasing the dragon, when Dean was so in love with him he would never admit it, when the man clutched him so painfully the burn of their connection paled in comparison and the most conflicted adoration passed over him like waves of honey, desperate prayers of entrapment. Dean had him any way he wanted him, and Cas clung to him as though frightened, as though all his troubles were quieted with the quiet singing of Dean’s love for him.

When they were done, Cas fell stiffly back against the headrest, sore, lips swollen, cheeks and chest red. The rumors about Dean were of course true.

How many times, and for Dean, only one? he thought vaguely, legs splayed from how they’d rested over broad, tanned shoulders while the hunter collected himself, ignoring the rosy vision of the man he’d defiled. Or trying poorly. His gaze always slipped to the side as he righted himself, pulled by the slowing breaths, the rustle of Cas’s hair as his hands combed anxiously through it, remembering their first. Dean had all of him, almost unquestionably. The weight of it left him balking, the meaninglessness with which their fearless leader tried so transparently to rename it as he crossed the floor, stood at the foot of the rumpled bed, watched Cas clinically: expecting an episode. Like his high made it too easy. Like Dean begrudged him giving into the mere suggestion of this _thing_ between them. Like only Cas could truly disappoint him.

It got him laughing. He shook with it, clenching the fabric, and closed his knees, struggling to ignore the burn between them, the ache of his hips as they creaked and he sat up. He hadn’t lost his virginity those years ago so much as he’d now finally learned how to lose; Dean hadn’t escorted him through his fall so much as taught him where he was destined to be, and come Hell or high water, it would always be one step behind, urgent. Subordinate. _Subservient._ Or worse, left to his own, the loyal dog kept on leash and neglected. A replay of the past few months.

Now, Dean seemed to want to speak. Now, finally, he gathered his breath the same way he did every morning before detailing a mission, giving orders, professing the Winchester Truth, Our mission remains. The world has not changed while you slept. Or whatever the camp got up to in his cabin when the door was unlocked. Cas beat the speech,

“Another brilliant conquest by our fearless leader,” he quipped, forcing his knee back suggestively, revealing the angry red lines scored behind him where Dean had torn him apart, he pointed a finger gun at his heart and winked, “Truly, one of your greatest hits.” Dean balked like he’d been shot.

His inamorato’s lips pressed tight, eyes bright and heavy but how could Cas hope to break them open, how could he give anything more without Dean taking the next step? How could that be the exit, flurry of coat in hand, ricochet of beads, spraying the side of his cabin like bullets?

_How could he?_

Cas would get used to the sound.

**Author's Note:**

> I have more to add to this, if I can revise it to a point where it's ready for consumption. The focus would broaden to other characters, particularly Chuck. I like Chuck.


End file.
